


Star Wars: Pompeii

by Rainbow_squirrels_7



Category: Star Wars, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Gen, Kind of AU?, inspired by... recent events
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-28
Updated: 2016-12-28
Packaged: 2018-09-12 20:08:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9088402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rainbow_squirrels_7/pseuds/Rainbow_squirrels_7
Summary: The galaxy loses a hero and it learns to cope





	

**Author's Note:**

> title comes from this song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGXBR1wR-mo

Pompeii

 

The galaxy cries when it first hears she’s gone.

Most out in sadness.

Some out in fear.

Others in anger.

They cry not in the way a very old man once said “all at once and were silenced”, as it was not their own passing.

They cry for what the galaxy lost:

The mother- despite the dark, she had wanted him home.

The general- she who stood surrounded by those who stood taller and still raised her voice above them for what she believed.

The princess- with her swirled hair and dress of moonlight.

The slayer of beasts- the chains of injustice she once wore were used against the very one to whom she was imprisoned.

The survivor- she had been the last left of a world destroyed in a shatter of stardust.

\--                                                                                                             

It was a matter of heart, was what most said.

\--

It was a matter of heart.

This news reaches those in darkness faster than usual because of the boy in the mask. Her blood was his own.

He feels her breath leave her body. He feels her join his father, whose breath had been punched through by a line of crooked fire. His own fire.

He thought he should feel… something.

She had been his mother, deny it though he would to anyone who asked. Should that at least make him feel?

But she was not even that anymore. It was she who sent him away.

The galaxy’s cries reach him (this is what he says to himself. Though his own mind, he feels them, he hears the cries. The curse of his teachings. He doesn’t believe he still can feel. He doesn’t know what to feel). He bites down hard on his lip, the blood runs down his chin, pooling in the front of his mask. He does not take it off.

Tears join the mixture, the smell of salt and the smell of iron. His own crooked fire had put a hole through the one he used to call father. He hadn’t cried then.

The only answer that makes sense is anger. Sparks and steam escape the walls when they are suddenly rent by a blade of red. White hot scars that fade to orange are shredded into the walls around the boy. He does not know why he is crying.  

Screams, his own, fill the air and he does not remove the mask.

He does not know why he is crying.

\--

“It was a matter of heart,” the soldier girl in armor of silver says, “not of battle.”

The general had been her opponent, nothing more. She had trained those whom she commanded not to feel. She had trained herself not to feel.

Why should she? She did not know her.

But-

Matters of the heart were not familiar to her. The soldiers she trained were quickly put down if any imperfections were found. Only the strongest were allowed to continue ( _allowed_ was what she always said. Those who saw it from the outside would not say as much). The heart was kept in top physical shape. The soldiers she trained never had _matters_.

She did not expect the general to go so quickly. And not in a fight. To not die in battle was not honorable to her. She wonders how the war will progress now. Statistics and battle are what the soldier girl does know.

The general she served under was not like the one who had gone. Words were what he fought with. His soldiers stood beneath him because of fear.

The general who had gone, she’d heard, had soldiers who stood not under her, but beside her. They fought in the same battle, side by side. And the soldier girl heard the good general wept if one of her soldiers were to fall.

The soldier girl does not know there are different types of generals.

The fiery-haired man who was her general did not weep if one of his soldiers were to be felled. She was sure he would not weep if she were to fall herself.

She does not know that there are different kinds of generals.

\--

_It was a matter of her heart_ is what runs through the circuits of a metal man with golden casing. He tells this to his squat, blue and white rolling companion. The second has already heard this news, but the golden one tells him anyway.

The golden one is not sure if he is supposed to feel. His emotions were programs. It was not part of what he was made for to feel.

He remembers the princess from long ago. A dress made of white diamonds and starlight, her hair swirled into galaxies framing the sides of her face. He remembers the exact moment he was launched into this story that would later be recounted as the beginning of the greatest adventure in the galaxy (this is, at least, how his blue and white companion begins the story. ‘Greatest adventure’ is not the terming the golden one would use).  

He feels her loss, like how he felt the loss of his companion when darkness had closed around the blinking of his lights. But unlike his blue and white friend, the golden one knows the princess will not return.

_Humans simply do not work that way_ is what he tells his friend. He does not know why, when so many humans have parts and pieces of metal, that they cannot be brought back.

_In place of metal, humans have feelings,_ is what his companion tells him. _They cannot be brought back, but they are able to feel._

That was what was so special about the princess. How she was able to feel. She cared for each and every member of her team. She never stopped caring for the ones she loved, the ones of her own blood. Even when each of them left her.

The golden one knows he and his companion are able to feel. But they cannot feel like ones made of flesh and blood and bone and heart are able to feel.

Even if he knows the answer-

He does not know why she can’t be brought back.

\--

It was a matter of the heart. The littlest Jedi, former scavenger is not told this.

She knows, somehow, though she isn’t sure how she knows.

She is not alone on the green island in the middle of the sea. But she might as well be, as the old man, the one spoken of in legends and fairytales is shut to the world.

The littlest Jedi had heard stories, back in the desert. Of the smuggler and the boy-knight, but especially of the girl, the slayer of beasts.

She wasn’t sure how many of them were true, as stories were woven with the very wind that blew the sands of the dunes away. They were told with breath full of stars, or of sand. Of oil or blood. She had been sure they were myths, words spoken to make days easier, to give one something to look towards in a land where scavenging came before storytelling.

Before she slayed beasts, she had been a damsel in distress. The boy-knight and the smuggler had been sent to rescue her.

She rescued them.

And the slayer of beasts had been forced into chains held by a giant, writhing worm. The beast. It ruled over a desert land (“much like this one” the storyteller would say. But it wasn’t the same, the then-scavenger had thought. There weren’t beasts in her desert. The desert itself was a beast) and garbed her in slaves’ clothes. With her own chains, the ones that had been meant to bind her, the slayer forced the life and breath from the beast, smothering it.

And there were those who would laugh at this story. _“It was the boy-knight and the smuggler who saved the day. She was no beast slayer; she was a slave girl._ ”

The littlest Jedi never doubted the slayer of beasts. She traded her findings for a metal chain one year, and wore it like a champion’s medal. _“I’m the beast-slayer_ ” she would tell all those who asked. But food grew scarce, and stories could not buy a full stomach. She sold the chain for half a day’s meal.

The boy-knight became the old man. The same old man the littlest Jedi would travel to find. The same old man who the galaxy had searched for, who had finally started to open his heart to the world.

_It was a matter of heart._

And the old man, once boy-knight had closed his own heart again. The littlest Jedi does not know if it will be reopened.

Like the boy in the mask, the old man shared blood with the slayer of beasts. He had felt the pain of the smuggler when the breath had been punched from his lungs by a crooked line of fire. And he had felt when the beast-slayer’s heart had failed.

Of the three which the stories spoke of, the three who were surrounded in golden light, the boy-knight turned old man was the only one left.

The littlest Jedi does not know if the old man’s heart will reopen.

\--

“It was a matter of her heart.” The pilot tells the soldier turned rescuer.

He’s crying as he tells this to his rescuer.

Unlike the littlest Jedi, the stories the pilot grew up on were not fragments of sand and wind and stars. They were told from the mouth and breath of the people who lived them. They were told by those who saw, who knew, who loved those who the stories were about.

He had been told the story of the ones who had saved the galaxy, the ones who had almost gone unnamed: the rebel-girl, the captain, the good droid, the turncoat pilot, the blind spirit-fighter, the fiery assassin. When his rescuer came, he had thought of the pilot in those stories.  

But he wasn’t thinking of those stories now.

The pilot had been told the story of the survivor.

She had been the only one to be left when her home was blown into stardust drifting through the ethereal winds and darkness of space. She was the only one left and she grew into a flame that became so large, it was impossible to snuff out.

Against all odds, the pilot was told, she survived. Through war, through pain, through love. She stood up to men turned monsters with dark masks and red eyes. And she stood up to monsters turned men, covered in skin and bones and words.

She had risen above everything in her own mind, all the things that she had been through manifested into a demon chewing its way through her every thought. Only those closest to the survivor knew of this demon.

The stories of the survivor told that she lived through the destruction of her home. She lived to lead an army that would save the galaxy. And the stories had ended there.

They had ended because the pilot himself had become part of them. And the survivor became no longer a worshipped idol from a story, she became his friend.

Despite everything the survivor had done, the war returned. Because of her own blood, some would say. The pilot doesn’t know what started the war.

The pilot had heard in stories that there was always a cause for the war. A long-meditated revenge scheme. A team of rebels fighting back against injustice. And this war, they said, the war that the pilot and the rescuer fought now, had been caused by the survivor’s blood. But the pilot does not know if this is true.

The pilot doesn’t know what started the war.

\--

“It was her heart,” the rescuer is told by the pilot.

The pilot is crying to his rescuer, and the rescuer tries to understand. Loss is hard, he knows this of course. He knows the woman by so many different names: mother, general, princess, beast-slayer, survivor. And he knows that someone with so many different names will not be forgotten (he knows this much about names, as the pilot gave him his own).

The mother will not be forgotten. But he doesn’t think about her own blood. She was a mother to them all. Adopting them by name, by cause, by care. Family wasn’t just by blood, the rescuer knows, thinking of the pilot and the littlest Jedi. Family was a choice.

The general will not be forgotten. Her two wars, stretching through the stars, touched every life in the galaxy. The peoples of every world would cry out her name in thanks. In thanks for saving them, yes, but also in thanks for inspiring them. Inspiration to continue on even when all the odds were rising against.

The princess will not be forgotten. The one who stood up for the cause she believed in. The one who never took no for an answer, and who didn’t let what others said about her change how she felt about herself.

The slayer of beasts will not be forgotten. Those who remember her as only a slave, as the one in the background while the two other golden children saved the day were wrong, the rescuer knew. She had not been just a pretty face. She rose up, crushing those who would use her for their own resolve. She knew what was right and what was wrong, and when to fight for her own freedom.

The survivor will not be forgotten. Not only the last survivor of a world turned to stardust, but a survivor of life. She took what life threw at her with her head held high and was not afraid to admit that sometimes a mother/general/princess/survivor was not always okay. And that was okay, the rescuer knew. It was okay to admit it was hard to go on, especially when everything was going wrong, as was often true with the survivor. She was the survivor who never stopped fighting to survive.

The rescuer tells all this to the pilot, and for a moment, he feels better. He will be not okay for some time; the rescuer knows this as well. But as the stars above each world move, as time flows its way through the galaxy, inspiration will be found. People don’t disappear after they are gone. It will be a rallying call. To make a better world, to make a better galaxy.

One full of forgiving mothers.

Of brave generals.

Of clever princesses.

Of fierce beast-slayers.

Of countless survivors.

The rescuer knows that they all will be able to go on.

\--

 


End file.
